Be Prepared! Some Reflections on Girl Guiding...

As I walked out of my building today, handbag in one hand, umbrella in the other, the caretaker, who held the door open for me, said “you must have been a girl guide.” “Sorry?” Pointing to my umbrella, he said again, “you must have been a girl guide – be prepared.” I smiled at him, frowned at the rain and headed on out. And just as the coldness of reason began to creep upwards from the wet soles of my shoes, I clicked. Oh! Girl Guide! Be prepared! I get it! Yes! Actually, I was! Wow. And for some reason, before today, I had completely blocked out that memory. How could I ever forget the priceless afternoons I spent clad in awful shapeless dresses and sashes doing silly things like shoveling earth all for the sake of a little badge with a sickle embroidered on it! Erm, call the gardener. Get him to shovel. And then give me a badge for management, damnit.

One would think, in a private school for relatively privileged kids, they could have offered a more constructive extracurricular activity. In a developing country where there are countless numbers of people starving and suffering and dying daily, surely we could have done something slightly more beneficial or humanitarian than dig up the lawns that lined the neatly manicured playgrounds of our private school (only for the gardeners to have to fix them later)…no? We were rather like Marie Antoinette—who built entire dairies for herself and her friends to play at “milking” in. Of course they were built from only the finest ceramics and porcelain, and I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that the girls spent more time admiring the interior than actually getting anywhere near a teat.

According to their website, the mission statement of the Girl Guides Association is to enable girls to make a difference to the world, and I’m certain that someone, somewhere along the way to my girl guide experience rather misinterpreted the word “difference.” But then again, the website also boasts Kate Moss as a celebrity former girl guide, so perhaps they are misguided all the way to the core. Be prepared, snort coke. What would the badge for that look like, I wonder. Maybe you wouldn’t get a badge for that—you’d just get a gram. Or a mirror. Or a rolled up hundred dollar bill—so that you’re always prepared! Snifff!

The caretaker was right though. I was prepared. Call me a genius, I knew it would rain. It rained yesterday, it rained the day before, and the day before that. But I think I used something along the lines of mathematics (probability?), or uhh, common sense to figure that out. No, wait! i just remembered. I looked out the window! (Give me a badge with a window on it. Or an umbrella. Ooh! That would be quite cute, actually). I hardly doubt girl-guiding did anything towards teaching me to be prepared, or teaching me anything really, other than how to be ridiculously bored and stylistically indistinguishable. What mathematics didn’t teach me, my mother did—to carry (besides the umbrella), a plastic bag for the wet umbrella afterwards, tissues, wet wipes, hand sanitizer, hand cream, tampons, headache pills, a pen, mints, gum, sunglasses, sunglass case, lip-ice, lip balm, lipstick, hair band, hair clip, hair pins, and then there's all the gadgets...And I do, I carry this all. Plus a toothbrush complete with mini toothpaste, in case of, you know, an unplanned “sleepover” (but mommy doesn’t know that). Hell I even found a button in my wallet today. A button! In a teeny-tiny Ziploc bag! So I am even half-prepared (sans sewing kit) to sew a button onto something, somewhere, sometime. If that’s not making a difference I don’t know what is.

IN THE VERMEER, NOT THE PORNOGRAPHIC SENSE!

This blog has moved to: http://girlwithapearlnecklace.com

It has recently come to my attention, three times this week, (by three men, incidentally), that "girl with a pearl necklace" bears some connotations i was not aware of...

me: so, i have a blog.

him: yeah? would love to read it. what's the address?

me: http://girlwithapearlnecklace.blogspot.com

him: woooaaahhh! (silence). (nervous laugh).

me: ?

him: i mean, um...er....do you mean, um, pearl necklace of the " " sort?

me: ummm, i mean it of this sort (pointing to pearl necklace lacing neck).

him: you are aware that pearl necklace can mean something else too...like...

me: (fear...panic...worry)

him:...like something, umm, pornographic.?

[bless him for letting it out gently].

phew. thank god i haven't sent the link to any professors or respectable persons yet. (mom - sorry). to spare myself from the arduous task of attempting to euphemise the pornographic meaning of "pearl necklace," and to avoid "spraying" my blog with such profanity, if you, like me, weren't aware of this connotation, and would like to be, please refer to:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pearl%20necklace

ick. i trust everyone who's reading knows me well enough to be sure i did not mean it in this way.

and to enlighten those of you who may only be familiar with the "urban dictionary" definition and not its other references...a few of many explanations for the title.

1. i happen to love pearls.

2. on most occasions, i am sporting one, if not many, pearl necklaces around my neck (refer to images below).

3. johannes vermeer, a famous dutch artist, painted a famous painting called "girl with a pearl earring." he also painted a slightly less well known one entitled "woman with a pearl necklace." (again, refer to images below). so besides the fact that i am a "girl with a pearl necklace," the title was also meant to bear reference to this iconic artwork...and sound echoes of my appreciation and love for art...and all things beautiful...

4. the pearl, i once read somewhere, is the stone of sincerity - something i try to express at least in my writing if not with my entire being...

5. also...pearls are rare...

so. lots of things to think about. pick one. any one. just not the pornographic one.

girl with a pearl earring, johannes vermeer.

woman with a peal necklace, johannes vermeer.

my pearl necklace, courtesy of photobooth.

monochrome pop-art of my pearl necklace (just for fun), also courtesy of photobooth.

In Praise of Men (Part III)

A few nights ago when I was having this conversation about mascara, with a man, of course, he gave me a very practical explanation. “Make-up,” he said, “is made to attract. Because it enhances all your features and makes them all slightly more pronounced, it enables me to notice you from a distance. Without it, you’re just a blur. But when you’re close-up, you’re you, with or without it—I can see all your features and I don’t need the make-up to emphasize them for me. Close-up, with make-up, you become a doll.” So this is why men, when they get to know us, and have already seen us many times close-up, say, don’t wear make up. What they’re saying is, “you don’t need to attract me anymore, I am attracted, I am here.” Erm…no! I want to be a doll!

But this brings me to my third and final part…for now. Aren’t they just so wonderfully practical? When I am stressing about how I-want-to-wear-that-silk-dress-that’s-been-hanging-in-my-closet-for-months-because-it’s-missing-a-button-so-i-need-to-take-it-this-afternoon-to-buy-a-button-for-it-or-replace-all-of-them-so-they-look-the-same-and-so-i-need-to-buy-a-sewing-kit-but-where-am-i-going-to-get-one-and-then-will-i-have-time-to-wash-and-blow-dry-and-straighten-my-hair-and-paint-my-nails-to-match-the-dress-and-then-iron-the-dress-because-i-carried-it-around-all-day-looking-for-a-button-and-then-put-it-on-and-call-a-cab-so-my-dress-doesn’t-get-wet-in-the-rain….he’ll come up with the perfect solution. Or many. Wear another dress, love. You don’t need to wash and blow-dry and straighten your hair, it looks fine as it is. Get the buttons you want and I’ll drop the dress off at my tailor’s while you get ready and then bring it to you when it’s done. Have a shower at my house – it’s closer to the restaurant. Yes! I have Paul Mitchell. Go on.

How easy that complicated, hormonal, hyphenated life becomes when there’s a man around. How do they have all the solutions? I think they have LEGO to thank for that. When they were younger they played with toys that came in pieces with manuals and pictures for how to put them together. We, on the other hand, had dolls, that with technology’s swift advancement only further opened up their possibilities and gave us more bits to make decisions about. We had to figure out what the doll was going to wear, or in some cases, eat, where she was going to go, and who she was going to go there with. Yes. Barbie never came with an instruction manual—we spent days and days making up (no pun intended), outfits, places, entire conversations for her to have with her equally made-up friends! (And you wonder why our imaginations are so vivid?!) While the boys would look up at us from time to time, wonder what the hell we were on, and swiftly turn back to their manuals to find step 238 to putting together the giant LEGO city.

Needless to say, they haven’t changed much. And I hardly mean this in a bad way. I love to see a man with his toys. Some like real cars, some like model ones, some like golf and some photography. They will spend hours and hours on the internet looking for the perfect antique camera to add to their collection, further hours and hours bidding on it, and then take an afternoon off work to go and meet the guy who’s selling it in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. Upon obtaining their new acquisition, which, need I mention, doesn’t work, they will play with it for the rest of the day to figure out what doesn’t work, do further googleing for yes! you guessed it—an instruction manual, and then proceed to plan out the following day so as to hit up all the shops that may stock those obsolete spare parts. Occasionally, they may require our help here—“yes, babe, I’m sure you’ll find them at Portobello Market—you know that little place I’ve been trying to convince you to take me to Saturday brunch at? Right across the street from that.” And sure enough, they’ll get that done, pick up your dress, go home, shower and change into clean jeans and a shirt without the “T,” and then play with their new, now functioning camera while they wait quietly for you to get ready. Ahhhh. You’ve just got to love them.

Turns out, boys will be boys. Now if only girls could be girls, (and not neurotic, feminist, sexist women), we could all learn to play together…as we did once upon a time, when we really were just…boys and girls.

In Praise of Men (Part II)

“Who’s the guy? Who’s the guy?” everyone asked me impatiently after reading Part I. (Note to self—do not send blog link to friends and family). Truth is, it doesn’t really matter who the guy is, and he’s not that kind of guy. Let me return to the beginning—“Every once in a while you come across a man who you can’t help but love just for being a man.” “For being a man”… not for being himself, or for loving you, or for treating you right…just—for being a prime living specimen from that vast Marsian pool we so love to hate. And my aim here was to take this specimen and draw it out so as to paint a picture “In Praise of Men” – a praise, I think has been increasingly lacking since Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan came along. Look what feminism gone and did; did we spend decades and decades trying to prove that we were more than just wombs only to get to the top and conversely reduce men to their sperm? Coming from the fairer sex, that’s not fair play. They are much more than sperm…and to continue from where I began in Part I, they are also much more than cigarette-lighting and compliment-paying devices.

I fear they don’t get enough compliments themselves. At least not from me. I’ve spent far too much time in the gaggle of Venutian geese criticizing them because they’ve hurt me, or because they haven’t—which is all the more befuddling, (never satisfied perhaps?), to stop and smell the man-roses. In all those times I had been thinking about whether I look great or not, and whether or not they will tell me I do, I rarely stopped to take a look and realize how great they can (and do) actually look…in their perfectly unplanned, un-blowdried, un-manicured, white-tee-blue-jeans edition. I love how they can just roll out of bed and be themselves, while we have to make-ourselves-up from scratch. Perhaps Freud and Lacan were right—“woman does not exist”—she is eternally envious of his phallus and will try desperately for the rest of her life to compensate for not having one through diamonds, heels and mascara.

“Baby you don’t need mascara. You’re beautiful as you are.” Oh! How often have I heard these words! Whether they tell me this because they really believe it, or because they think without mascara it may take me less time to get ready, I don’t know. We spend all night fearing that they will wake up next to us and not recognize us as the woman they went to bed with, while they spend all night yearning for the morning to come, and to finally see her for her…to finally meet the woman behind the mask they had dinner with. And there is something so beautiful in this yearning. So not only are they beautiful in their unmasked appearance…you’ve just got to love them for wanting, and knowing, you to be so too. And though I find it exceedingly difficult to convince myself of this, I am certain their fascination can only grow when they see you as you…you sans Chanel, Dior and Crème de la Mer…you are his crème de la mer!

[to be continued...]

In Praise of Men (Part I)

Every once in a while, a man comes along who you can’t help but love just for being a man. Amidst the current hoopla in the news with everyone asking if men are now “redundant” because scientists can coin sperm, I can gladly say I’ve met one who with every ounce of his being proves to me that they’re not. Women, I think, are bound to go through a phase, or many, where they despise men. From the very first one in kindergarten who steals your hair-band and runs off with it ruining your perfect princess-ponytail, to your first love who decides before you do that he’s ready for his second, and the countless others that follow who don’t call when they say they will, cheat on you with your best friend, or leave you at home with the kids and their laundry, we learn to despise them. Yes, from the moment we discover that men are from mars, we are certain to encounter an endless succession of moments in which we find ourselves wishing that they would just build themselves a Noah’s ark of a spaceship, get on it two-by-two, and go the hell back there.

After waving them off, we could then, in all our fascist-feminist glory, proceed to turn earth into Venus and throw away our year’s prescriptions for the Pill, go to all the ballets and musicals they wouldn’t take us to, and oh!—take as long as we want to fastidiously get ready for them. If and when the Venutian population began to dwindle, we would turn to our trusty scientists for our allocated dose of sperm and procreate. Needless to say, there would be a conc-men-tration camp set up to readily accept all of the newborns that happened to be male…though with their already demonstrated rapidly growing adeptness and expertise, the scientists would surely soon come up with a way to circumvent their production altogether. Ah. What bliss. Shopping and chick-flicks and no more socks on the floor—life sans heartache, tears, and fruitless attempts at interplanetary communication—life without ever having to hear or attempt to understand those famous words, “he’s just not that into you.”

Granted, with or without the spaceship, this “Venutian” lifestyle is the one to which many women revert in those moments when they despise men. Few of us are lucky enough to have a token gay friend to listen to all our man-trouble, and even they can only listen so long (“how much longer until Prada?”), so we turn to our girlfriends—those trusty sister-beings who will look and listen and nod, ceaselessly with eyes full of understanding, compassion, sympathy, and then proceed to tell their version of the same story that inevitably convinces us we are neither crazy nor alone. Their eyes are full of everything his deer-in-headlights face lacked when you tried to explain it to him, their eyes give you everything you ever wanted. But in all of that looking, listening, and nodding, in all of the glasses of wine you may consume and cigarettes you may chain-smoke, they will never—never!—once think to pick up that lighter and light it for you.

And it is this moment that you’ll wish that Noah’s ark flight was a return one, you’ll pick up the phone and call Marsian Airways to find out when the plane lands. Then you’ll, no doubt, buy a dress, paint your toenails, blow-dry your hair and go to the landing strip (no further). And even if you (or your salon) don’t have the time to do this, you will show up looking like shit, and your heart will melt all over again when one of them steps off the spaceship and tells you you look great, while the rest of them walk-by, and sex-starved, look at you (as my mother always says), the way a cat looks at bacon. 

Meow, sizzle, pop, crack, boom and we're back to the beginning...

[to be continued...]

The United Kingdom of Don't Touch That...?

The first time I went to New York, before I was old, educated, or cultured enough to have any sort of appreciation for museums, and hence any desire to visit them, the only one that held any appeal for me and the only one I ended up going to was Madame Tussauds. Now I would hesitate before even calling this a museum, and I certainly doubt I will ever enter one again…but back then, coming from the African jungle where there wasn’t even a cinema by way of entertainment, the idea of rubbing shoulders with the celebrities I had grown up watching, loving and envying on TV was mind-blowing, even though they were made of wax and would probably melt to the floor if the air-conditioning stopped working and the heat of New York summer snuck into the building. I kissed Brad Pitt, I impersonated Diana Ross and I looked high up into Shaq’s nose. I took pictures with all of them, and I couldn’t wait to get back home and convince all my highschool friends that Brad Pitt and I were now BFFs. Well I took pictures with all but one – Princess Diana was guarded by a velvet rope and therefore off-limits. A tad too late, they had finally decided to give the woman some space. The American friend I was with said, “I bet the Brits ordered that. They’re so damn uptight.” The Americans, of course, were much more liberal with their “kings”—you could lick Elvis if you wanted to.

But when I moved there years later, I learned that Diana wasn’t the only thing you couldn’t touch in New York, and it wasn’t only the Brits who were “uptight.” Far from being the land of liberty, America was the land of the velvet rope, the land of the forbidden, as Ben Stiller rightly calls it in Night at the Museum II, “The United States of Don’t Touch That”. There’s no playing ball on the beach, no walking on the grass in Central Park, no climbing the lions that guard the Public Library. What do you do on the beach other than play ball, or in the park other than walk on the grass, or with a statue but climb up and pose for a photograph…or god forbid, make out? We all know this—just as a diary with a lock and key invites you to open it, a glass cabinet to touch or lean on it, so a statue invites you to climb it, ride it, hug it, kiss it, or whatever else your imagination might drive you to do. Juliet’s breast in Verona has lost its color from all the people that have touched it. Lord only knows how many marble, cement and stone breasts, bums and balls I have touched, how many lions and horses I have ridden, how many generals and greek gods have given me piggy backs…all in the name of “original” tourist photography, or playing the fool.

But there is something deeper that occurs in this interaction with a city’s concrete zoo. Yes, we are indeed left with great photographs of ourselves draped across a copper steed, and priceless memories of teenage kissing sessions that lasted so long even the lion seemed to let out a yawn, but in doing so we also subconsciously feel we have left our mark on a city, the way it inevitably leaves its mark on us. Yes, in those moments, we once again become the schoolchildren who inscribed their names with compasses on the bathroom walls and wrote the words “was here” beneath them, the teenagers who fingered their love’s name on the fogged up windscreen of their first car, dogs who piss on their territory to say that’s mine. Of course, some people do go to these actual measures, take the notion of leaving their mark on the city’s monuments beyond the symbolic, which is probably why America has surrounded itself with velvet rope. But this is also why I feel I never “left my mark,” on it, why I never hugged, kissed or touched any part of it, and consequently perhaps why it never touched me.

When I came to London I immediately fell in love, and we caressed each other day and night. I spent many a night in Trafalgar Square leaning on Nelson's column waiting for a date, and many a sunny day there, sitting on the steps in front of the National Gallery, eating a sandwich and smiling as I watched children climb up the lions and say to their parents “Look!” “Look at me!” Yes, they were saying, “look at me, I’m on the lion,” but they were also inherently saying, “look at me, I’m a part of London, and it’s a part of me!” – partly what I imagine Antony Gormley had in mind with his "One&Other" project for the fourth plinth—where different Britons stand for an hour each day, all day, in an artistically symbolic installation where people become the people of the city, in the city, and on the city. Regardless of whether or not we may agree that this work is or isn’t art, I’m sure we could agree that it serves a priceless function in not only representing, but defining the city and the people who live in it, and in doing so, distinguishing it markedly from anywhere else, like say, the U.S of D.T.T.

When I read in the newspaper yesterday that Nicholas Penny, the director of the National Gallery was appalled by the roudiness and debauchery of the people in Trafalgar Square and felt that it was “destroying the tranquility of the National Gallery” and disturbing the high art and culture within the gallery’s walls, I couldn’t believe it. Granted he is defending tradition and old school values…but if that’s what he wants, then returning to the good old days also means returning to the days of very few people going to museums. Over the last few decades the number of museum-goers has more than doubled, and if this means the outside is noisy then so be it. It’s a price you have to pay for huge “price” you’re making compared to what you used to. Velazquez will be Velazquez—it will take a lot more than lion-climbing children and seemingly animalistic humans to disrupt that. And if this country turns into the United Kingdom of Don’t Touch That, I’m leaving. And don’t touch me on my way out.

london calling.

"sorry, i've got to run, but i'll email you and we can arrange a meeting. when are you leaving?" someone said to me today. "i'm not leaving...i'm here to stay..." i said calmly. "you're here to stay!?" his response was hardly as calm. "you are not going anywhere? you!? i can't believe it!" as he said that, all his credit cards fell out of the wallet he had just taken out to pay for lunch."i'm here to stay" i said again, reassuringly. who knew these four words had the ability to make plastic go boom. well, actually, after a day of thinking about it, i realize i did. if itunes could come up with some "top played words" for each person's vocabulary then my top two would be "i'm leaving." i can't wait for you to order that book for me, i'm leaving...can't you have that dry-cleaned any sooner? - i'm leaving...and my all-time favorite: i can't fall in love with you, i'm leaving..."since i was three, i've been leaving. leaving for the weekend, for the summer, for the year, for-maybe-ever...no, not forever, i doubt any place will have the pleasure of my eternal presence...but lets say, for minute eternities, small forevers, forevers-until-i-change-my-mind. when i was younger, my parents would buy my plane tickets months in advance, and no matter what happened between the date of purchase and the date of travel, we stuck to it. itineraries were set in stone and it was a cardinal sin (if not a painful one) to attempt to change them. but the more i traveled, and the older i got, i realized sometimes it may be worth that $50 change to hang around for just a moment longer...to get that book, pick-up your dry-cleaning, or...fall in love...just as you may want to change it to earlier if you fall out of it...so if my top played words are "i'm leaving," the ones of those who know me are "when are you coming back?" needless to say, the runner-up in my list is "i don't know." and yet, for the first time in my life today i inserted a little "not" in between my bread and my butter. i'm not leaving. ha! boom! stop trying to figure me out and pick those credit cards up.

yes. dear london, our love is here to stay. how long for? forever until i change my mind.